FAISALABAD The City

‘Rural migration a threat to agriculture’
From Our Correspondent
FAISALABAD: The massive migration from rural areas towards cities is not only aggravating the urbanisation issue but also expediting the issue of food insecurity and conversion of fertile agricultural land into housing societies, said UAF Vice-Chancellor Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan.
Talking to a delegation of the National Institute of Management, Karachi, led by Chief Instructor Khawaja Shaukat Hussain here on Tuesday, Dr Iqrar said that the Punjab government’s farm-to-market roads project would bring tangible results by providing good infrastructure to the farming community. He said that the agriculture was directly linked to poverty alleviation as 70 per cent of the population was linked with the sector. He said that uplift of rural areas was the need of hour to curtail massive migration towards cities. He said that even in the British era in the subcontinent, the focus was on developing a network of irrigation system to bring the green revolution. The irrigation system brought the vistas of prosperity and turned the barren lands into lush green fields, he added. He said that Lyallpur City (now Faisalabad) remained a hub of market in which the produce and livestock of rural people were bought and sold. A century ago, three markets had been established in Sargodha (then Shahpur), Faisalabad (then Lyallpur) and Sahiwal (then Montgomery). New markets on the same pattern in different parts of country were imperative to meet the demands of the local inhabitants, he added.
Chief Instructor Khawaja Shaukat Hussain said that being a mother of all educational institutions in sub-continent, the UAF had played a vital role in producing the manpower and research work. Later, the delegation visited the Institute of Horticulture Sciences.